The answer seems simple. But as a new film makes clear, the answer isn’t always yes.

“Sound and Fury,” opening tomorrow, follows the Artinian family of Glen Cove, L.I., with its two grown brothers – one hearing, one not. When each brother has a deaf child of his own, they make different choices and the family explodes.

Dividing them is a cochlear implant, the surgical treatment that some hail as a near-miracle – if not a cure for deafness, then the next best thing.

Those opposed find the device “robotic,” and see it as a way of erasing a proud deaf heritage, a view some outsiders can’t understand.

Hearing specialist Dr. James Hudspeth likens it to “taking a child from a black family and raising him as a white person.”

But he can see both sides. “When people hear there’s opposition from the deaf community, it sounds like Luddite posturing,” says Hudspeth, of Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Maryland and New York’s Rockefeller University. “But since World War II, the deaf have set their own standards . . .

“Adopting American Sign Language has enhanced their ability to move up, and now the community that did this hard work is concerned that their children or friends will be pulled away and adopted by a relatively insensitive hearing community.”

In 1992, the National Association of the Deaf (NAD) opposed the implants, citing, among other things, surgical risk and possible long-term consequences. It recently revised its policy, recognizing the right of parents “to make informed choices on behalf of their deaf child.”

“It took time for hearing aids to be accepted by the deaf community and it likewise will take time for cochlear implants,” Nancy Block, NAD’s executive director, told The Post. “There will always be those who support the use of technological aids and others who do not. There are also those who still are not fully convinced that the benefits of implant surgery outweigh the long-term ramifications.”

One who isn’t convinced is Peter Artinian, the deaf brother featured in the film. Though his parents and brother implored him to let his 6-year-old daughter have the surgery, he and his wife, who is also deaf, decided against it.

They subsequently left Long Island for a deaf community in Maryland.

“Heather is very happy,” Artinian told The Post, speaking through a telephone-relay service about his daughter, who can hear only high frequencies with her hearing aid.

“She loves Maryland’s School for the Deaf and she likes her peers there, too. She never talks about CI [cochlear implants] . . . she is wearing a hearing aid and likes it. She prefers it to a CI.

“I told her that if she does want it in the future, to let me know.”

But then it may be too late.

The best candidates are very young children, explains Peg Williams, an audiologist who heads the nonprofit Cochlear Implant Association.

“Those who have the hardest time adjusting are those who’ve reached adulthood having never learned speech and language,” she says.

Donna Sorkin had an implant as an adult. She’d been born with a hearing loss that grew worse as she got older, until hearing aids no longer helped.

“It wasn’t a difficult choice at all,” says Sorkin, president of the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing.

“I spoke to other people who’d done this and saw how well they did, as well as people who didn’t do as well – but everyone did better than they had done before.

“People told me I was denying my deafness because I was having an implant. My response was, ‘I know I’m deaf. I just want the opportunity to access sound.'”

Eight years later, she still has trouble in noisy environments, and can’t always understand someone who speaks quickly. Every 14 hours or so, the batteries in her transmitter die and she has to change them.

She says she’s adjusted well, and if she had it to do over, she wouldn’t hesitate.

“For me, it’s not just the ability to communicate on the phone, and to travel and feel independent,” Sorkin says. “There are a whole lot of sounds I enjoy being exposed to. I went to the ballet the other night. Watching it isn’t the same without hearing the music.”

Evelyn Glennie, the world-famous percussionist, lost her hearing as a child. Unlike Sorkin, however, she’s decided against an implant.

“I have spent so long hearing and listening in my own way and refining all my other senses in order to do what I do,” the 35-year-old musician said in an e-mail message to The Post. “To suddenly have everything changed at the age I am would be a risk I do not wish to make.”

James and Kassie DePaiva were willing to take a risk. The “One Life to Live” stars were devastated when their son, James Quentin – J.Q. – was born deaf.

Hearing aids allowed him to hear some sound, much of it distorted. When he spoke, they say, he used only vowels, since he wasn’t able to hear anything else.

When he was 18 months old, they took him in for an implant.

“It’s invasive, major surgery,” Kassie says. “But the real work begins later – after implantation.” Someone who’s born deaf, she says, has to learn how to distinguish between, say, the sound of a dog barking and a door slamming.

Now 3 ½ years old, J.Q. is in a mainstream preschool. He receives speech therapy four hours a week at the League for the Hard of Hearing and gets some private help as well – all of it covered, the DePaivas say, by the city and state.

“New York is the best place to be if you have a child with a disability,” James DePaiva says.

So hungry is J.Q. to hear that he won’t let them remove the headpiece even when he goes to bed. They have to wait until he’s asleep.

“We’re looking forward to learning sign language,” Jim says.

“Our son is still deaf. This lets him hear, but it’s not the miracle some people may expect.”